Battle for Azeroth system requirements get another bump

We’ve talked before about upcoming system requirements for Battle for Azeroth when the configuration warning was first datamined, but now we know exactly what they will be — and they are significantly higher than Legion. The minimum requirements for Battle for Azeroth might well require you to upgrade if you’ve been playing WoW on an older PC.

Comparing the System Requirements

• The CPU requirements aren’t that big a jump up. Battle for Azeroth minimum specs are an Intel Core i5-760 or AMD FX-8100. Legion asked for an Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 or AMD Phenom II X3 720 at minimum.
• Battle requires a 64-bit OS, whereas Legion did not.
• Battle lists an NVIDIA GeForce GT 560 2GB, AMD Radeon HD 7850 2GB, or Intel HD Graphics 530 (45W) as the minimum required GPU. Legion’s minimum requirements were an NVIDIA GeForce GT 440, AMD Radeon HD 5670, or Intel HD Graphics 5000.
• Battle says 4GB of RAM for a minimum, whereas the minimum for Legion was 2GB.
• Battle will required 70 GB of hard drive space, up from Legion’s 45 GB.

Breaking it down

The biggest changes are the need for a 64-bit OS and the graphics card requirements. We already knew about the 64-bit OS, and that the video card in your game would need to be DirectX 11 compatible. We now know that they are asking for substantially better cards this time around. Yes, this is a jump. It’s not an unexpected one given what we knew about DirectX 11, but it’s a jump.

The RAM jump is also worth noting — Legion recommends 4 GB, but that’s the minimum for Battle, with 8 GB as the recommended. Essentially, if you’re at or above Legion‘s recommended system specs, you’re at least at or above Battle’s minimum… but if you’re just barely running Legion, you’re going to need to upgrade some things. Also, if you have WoW installed on a drive with limited space, look into freeing up some, because Battle makes WoW even bigger. Legion takes up 45 GB of space, but Battle will be taking up 70 GB, so if you’re running close to full on your WoW install, now might be the time to move it.

You can take a look at the system requirements here. Remember, if you’re not sure what you’re running and you’re on a Windows machine, you can run dxdiag and it will tell you if you need to panic or not. Actually, don’t panic. It’s never a good idea.